


Celebrating Writers: Season 5 of Supernatural

by yourlibrarian



Series: Celebrating Writers [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, Episode: s05e06 I Believe The Children Are Our Future, Episode: s05e16 Dark Side of the Moon, Gen, Meta, Season/Series 05, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:09:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6803521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I decided to do a brief discussion of the episodes I thought were most impressive from a writing standpoint. They're not necessarily the most significant, or my favorite episodes (as there are some more flawed stories I quite enjoyed) but I do think they're the best put-together.</p><p>So for S5 my three choices are:</p>
            </blockquote>





	Celebrating Writers: Season 5 of Supernatural

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted September 19, 2010

1) The End (Ben Edlund) – I would bet that 90% of the fandom would name this the best S5 episode, which in SPN fandom is about as close to consensus as you'll ever get. The reasons for its popularity are, I think, self-evident. It contained some wonderful performances, it was a change of pace for SPN, it dealt with the seasonal arc, it had some great production value, and also some quotable lines.

However, my biggest reason for choosing it is its pacing. Bad pacing is the bane of SPN episodes and seasons alike. I've no idea if Sera Gamble is going to be any better at this, but this was clearly Eric Kripke's Achilles heel. This plays out as big ideas that then go nowhere, or too much idea for the episode in question. A good discussion of this appears on the S2 discs in the documentary feature on the two-part finale. One case study of this problem appeared in the premiere of S5, which was packed with a ton of ideas, none addressed very well, and some of which ended up going nowhere over the course of the season.

By contrast, many of Edlund's episodes are among the best paced in the series. Nighshifter is an excellent example of this, juggling several storylines in the same episode and providing payoffs for all of them. He does the same here with the question of the angels' plans, how the apocalypse will play out, transitions for Castiel, Dean, and Sam, Sam and Dean reuniting, and the general plot and Dean's attack plan. There were no dangling plot threads either, of elements introduced that either weren't explained or which didn't work. I should add that this doesn't mean there weren't spaces left in the episode that could have been filled in with greater detail (Dean and Risa, for example). However, there's a difference between sloppily executed and unexplored, and fans are always happy to fill in the hinted at gaps but tend to get irritated at elements of a plot that don't make any sense.

What makes a good episode's writing stand out is when the episode can be viewed repeatedly without losing its overall effect. That's certainly true for The End.

2) Dark Side of the Moon (Dabb and Loflin) – Thankfully this episode wasn't botched, because with so many potentially memorable moments but so many callbacks to handle and explanations to deliver, it could have been a horrifying mess. Some of the scenes are a bit clumsier than they could have been, but overall this episode delivered the emotional punch of the season and the pacing was, again, a major reason for its success.

Consider all the elements requiring introduction. We have two characters' brief appearance to dispatch Sam and Dean to the hereafter. This could have been a very perfunctory affair but the writers give us a little to go on that tells us about both the hunters and the Winchesters. We have one of the loveliest scenes in the whole series, in Dean's memory of a night with Sam. They could have tried to do too much here, but instead the poignancy comes through largely from the performances and a few well-chosen lines. Then we get the plot started as Dean searches for Sam (Cas, with a bit of humor, delivers exposition). We move on to the threat in Sam's scene, with Cas doing exposition again, then go on to more poignancy in Mary's appearance. 

One huge complaint I had during S5 was the general lack of action and accomplishment on Sam and Dean's part. In general, the season had Sam and Dean moving through episodes like wind up dolls with other characters handing them tools or information and then very simple solutions presented at the end to tidy up the episode threads. This was deeply unsatisfying in a series that is all about a very action-oriented family.

One of the few episodes in which I give the show a pass on this front is in Dark Side. In many ways it is an excellent example of just this problem -- consider how even in their deaths they're just sleeping in bed when someone appears to shoot them, rather than dying in the midst of a hunt. But the setting is one where it's understandable that Sam and Dean must utilize guides to figure out what to do and what things mean. 

As such, the moves to temper exposition with humor (done again with Ash), punctuate revelations with action, and provide key moments for each character get balanced out pretty well in the episode. The villain of the piece gets his moment to shine, Castiel gets an important emotional beat at the end, one of the series' clowns reminds us why he should be missed, and the brothers get to cycle through love, anger, betrayal, and despair. As usual, credit must be given to the performances to make the material meaningful, but the audience also has to be made to care about what's going to happen next.

3) I Believe the Children Are Our Future (Dabb and Loflin) – Opinions on this episode varied at the time and unfortunately this is not en episode that handles its elements smoothly. There are twists and situations that make little sense, and they just become more glaring as the episode is viewed again. What’s worse, this episode, like Monster at the End of the Book, introduces a major disruptive element into the series verse and the seasonal arc which never goes anywhere. However, on an episode-only level there were at least two things done well here that floated this episode a little above a dim lot.

The pacing of the episode was not one of them, it was quite wobbly. There were a lot of shortcuts taken with Jesse and his mother largely because the episode starts out as one thing and then morphs into something else entirely and there just isn't enough time to give everything sufficient attention. I actually liked the idea of both elements together, as I imagine the show was striving to find some humor in a season with relentlessly dark developments. Unlike the over the top nature of some other episodes, this episode had a nice callback to early SPN's urban legends of the week theme. But the storyline of Jesse, his mother, and the backstory of demons at work and then back again as a threat, was rushed and ultimately ridiculous.

Similarly, the ultimate effect on both Sam and Dean in the coda was also rushed and unclear, and a better episode would have either made this a two-parter or tried to focus on only one of the plot lines. More time should have been spent on the deep moral conflicts brought out among Team Free Will by Jesse's presence and their own past actions. These things are all hinted at in the scenes that take place but, like so much else in the episode, they are underexplored.

What I thought worked in this episode were the tone and the centerpiece of the episode. This episode focused on the dilemma that now faces Sam and Dean after a season in which each failed miserably at their ultimate goals. To begin to regroup after intense self-doubt is a tough task, and one which could have been better explored over this season. This episode is one of the few places where this is done successfully in an emotional way instead of an expository one. The episode tonally brings the brothers together as partners in the first half of the episode, and brings them together as family members by the end. In other words, this episode successfully performed the job in which the previous episode, Fallen Idols, one of the worst in the whole series, failed to do in any but the most perfunctory way. If one compares the two episodes, one can see the difference between writing that something happens, and actually having it happen on screen as a natural development of the situation and characters involved.


End file.
